


you, and you, and nothing but you

by bookishandbossy



Series: the next four years (college au) [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, Road Trip, what a surprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 20:51:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3182726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a rite of passage. Or, Fitzsimmons have three thousand miles to figure it out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you, and you, and nothing but you

_I. Logan Airport, June 18, 10am._  
Fitz met her at at Logan an hour after his own flight got in, holding up a piece of paper with her name on it and more nervous than he'd ever been before in his life. If she'd kissed him twice, maybe that meant that she wanted to kiss him again? And if she did want to kiss him again, should he kiss her or just wait politely? He'd had to sprint down the concourse to make his flight after she'd kissed him long enough that there wasn't any time left to ask her why she'd kissed him. The flight attendant had called his name in a remarkably exasperated voice, he'd remembered that there were things he was supposed to be doing other than kissing Jemma Simmons, and all he'd managed to do was stammer out a goodbye as he dashed for his gate. She'd just smiled after him when he glanced back, looking slightly dazed and more than slightly surprised as she pressed her hand to her mouth. Fitz had then promptly spent the past month analyzing Jemma like she was a particularly maddening, kind of wonderful mathematical problem on a more-than-regular basis and had managed to get absolutely nowhere. 

Then she was walking out of customs, dragging a gigantic suitcase behind her and scanning the crowd for him, and he felt his heart do an awkward little jump in his chest. When he lifted his sign higher, waved it above his head, and called her name as loudly as he could, the group of Italian tourists standing next to him began to provide a lively commentary. Fitz determinedly ignored them. When she finally spotted him and nearly ran over three people with her suitcase trying to get to him, the Italians laughed cheerfully. Fitz gave them a pointed glare. Then, before he could even say hello, she kissed him, and they applauded. He was too busy kissing her back to do anything about it.

“So, is this our thing now? Kissing in airports?” he gasped out when she finally let him go. 

“Maybe? If you want it to be?” Jemma started fidgeting, bouncing on the balls of her feet and twisting her hair—she'd done something new to it, he noticed—around one finger, and because he knew all her nervous tics, he wrapped one hand around hers, where it rested on the handle of her suitcase. “I don't know. I saw you and I just, um...I wanted to kiss you. So I did.”

“Okay. I—I wanted to kiss you too. May I?” he blurted out. She stared at him for a moment, wide-eyed, before she nodded eagerly and tilted her face up towards his. This kiss was slower, studied, as he carefully molded his mouth to hers and let one hand come up to cup her jaw. She sighed into his mouth and pulled him closer, and Fitz could feel himself grinning as they kissed. The Italians kept on applauding.

“So what is this?” she asked when they finally pulled apart and leaned her forehead against his. “Are we...what do we want to be? Because I'm not sure I know. I spent an entire month moping around home and thinking about it and not coming to any kind of conclusion. It was quite alarming—I always come to conclusions, you know. I just knew that I'd really, really liked kissing you the night that Ryan broke up with me and I'd convinced myself that it couldn't possibly have been as good as I'd remembered it, so then in the airport, I thought that I ought to try it out again. And then I thought about kissing you for an entire month. I really couldn't stop, which was also quite alarming and then--”

“We're best friends who know that they like to kiss each other. That's a start, yeah? And we've got about 3,000 miles together to figure it out, enough time to do it properly. To think, to talk, to try things. And I think we know that, no matter what happens, we're going to be okay.” He knew a great deal more than that, Fitz thought, like the fact that he'd like to kiss her for the rest of their lives if she'd allow it. But (even though he had never had the best sense of timing), he knew that Logan airport on a hot June morning, surrounded by tourists who were watching them as avidly as a football match, was definitely not the right time or the right place. So instead he insisted on taking her suitcase, even thought he knew he would collapse from the weight before they got to the rental place, and wove his fingers through hers, squeezing tight. “Let's get the car?”

“We're not getting a sports car,” she warned him and sighed. “We need something that's extremely easy to drive, and extremely unlikely to get damaged. Tell me why two terrible drivers are taking a road trip?”

“It's a rite of passage.”

 _ii. Boston's North End, June 18th,2pm._  
Jemma was fairly sure that cannoli were not traditional road trip snacks. But they'd bought about six of them anyway, and now they were sprawled out on the Greenway, soaking up the sun and eating Italian pastry, and she thought that it was a pretty perfect start to their trip. “We don't have much time left on the meter,” she said lazily. “I'm not sure how well these are going to travel.”

“I can eat them all before the meter runs out,” Fitz protested and promptly shoved another cannoli into his mouth. He had cream smeared all around his mouth and powdered sugar coating the collar of his shirt and chocolate in his hair (how had that happened?), and he looked ridiculous, and she felt an improbable surge of affection in her chest. A week ago, she would have tried to analyze it but now she just tipped her head back to feel the sun on her face and accepted it as another piece of the puzzle that was them. They had three thousand miles after all. Three thousand miles and sixteen different road trip playlists and her parents' credit card and a million puzzle pieces.

So she didn't analyze it when she pulled on his powdered sugar collar and pulled him in for a kiss. He tasted impossibly sweet, warm and steady against her despite the pounding of his heart, and she had always objectively known that kissing Fitz would be good, but now she knew that it was _good_. “You better save at least one for me,” she teased as she brushed her lips against his cheek. “Or there will be serious consequences.”

Then she snatched up all the bags of food and took off for the car as fast as she could, giggling all the way. He chased after her and, when he caught her, spun her around and kissed her against the window of the car. Some passing Boston natives scowled at them (only Bostonians scowl at happy couples), he just kissed her harder. “Getting scolded for PDA,” he informed her. “It's another rite of passage.”

 _iii. Washington DC, June 20th, 11:30am_  
“Those are real rockets, Jemma. Real rockets that have been in real outer space!” They were at the National Air and Space Museum and Fitz was far too excited. Jemma made a mental note to never feed him more than two scoops of ice cream at a time again.

“So what's fictional outer space then?” she leaned against him with a shiver and a pout, muttering something about American air conditioning. Fitz shrugged off his jacket and offered it to her, but she shook her head and tugged on him until he acquiesced and wrapped his arms around her instead, his warmth surrounding her. The jacket had felt too boyfriend-y, she reasoned as she tucked her head into the crook of his neck and ignored the French tourist who gave her a giant thumbs up and mouthed something that looked like “il est mignon” at her. She already knew just how cute he was, especially when he was staring up at rockets with that wide-eyed look of amazement.

“Star Wars,” he shrugged. “Doctor Who. Star Trek. Pretty much every sci-fi movie ever. I even wrote a paper about whether the Enterprise, the Millenium Falcon, or the TARDIS would be more likely to actually survive in space. Professor Stark gave me a B+.”

“How dare he,” Jemma said fondly and leaned up on the tips of her toes to kiss his cheek. Fitz turned a delightful shade of pink and the French tourist let out a discreet whistle. 

“Technically, that wasn't the assignment. _Technically._ My genius goes unappreciated yet again,” Fitz mock-grumbled. “Airplanes now? Please?”

“I appreciate your genius.” Jemma arched an eyebrow at him. “Half an hour for planes, then we go to the Natural History Museum, including the Bug Zoo. Lots of creepy crawlies,” she added happily and felt him shudder beside her. 

“The things I do for you,” he muttered, making her giggle. She opened her mouth, to inform him that he loved it, and realized that “love” was one of those words they were dancing around, and promptly closed it. She kissed him instead, outside on the National Mall, in the heavy heat of Washington in the summer, and tasted the sugar on his lips. Fitz always tasted sweet, Jemma thought, sweet enough to be addictive.

 _iv. Somewhere in North Carolina, June 21, 3pm_  
“Barbeque is the greatest human invention of all time. Forget the wheel,” Fitz announced and bit into his brisket sandwich. They were somewhere in the mountains, at a tiny roadside barbeque place that Jemma's guidebook had told her was legendary, sitting at a splintery wooden picnic table covered with paper plates of barbeque, and the sun brought out the gold in Jemma's eyes and he was deliriously happy.

“Y'all are so cute,” their waitress beamed down at them as she set down a tray of cornbread. “Where are those accents from?”

“England and Scotland,” he mumbled through a mouthful of brisket.

“However did y'all end up here?”

“It's a rite of passage.” Jemma said easily and reached over to squeeze his hand. The waitress actually cooed and the Spanish tourists (why were there Spanish tourists in the middle of North Carolina?) gave them an approving smile. “I think it's a conspiracy,” she whispered to Fitz. “Skye has somehow gotten the word out to tour groups everywhere and planted them along our route to embarrass us.”

“You told her, didn't you?” he groaned. He'd been wondering about the long series of winking emoticons and cartoon kisses Skye had been sending him at such a steady rate that he was willing to bet she'd programmed her phone to send the messages automatically. Jemma must have told her that they were....something. They were forty-six kisses, five prolonged cuddling sessions, and holding hands a hundred and twenty nine times, but Fitz had no idea what all of that equaled and he was barely able to resist texting Skye and asking her the exact words Jemma had used to describe what had happened between them. He stared down at his phone, stared up at Jemma, stared at his phone, remembered that the mature thing to do would probably be to just ask her, and discarded that as a terrible idea. How would he even phrase that? _Jemma, how would you theoretically describe us to a not-so-theoretical close friend? How much did you tell her about the kissing? Where did it rate? Did it even rate at all?_

(Jemma should never have told him about her snogging scale, where she rated every guy she'd made out with according to a detailed set of criteria. He'd ever seen a chart in her room once and now he was desperately trying to remember it—there'd been something about variation and pressure and coordination of hands and lips...he should definitely call Skye. He definitely shouldn't call Skye. There wasn't even cell phone reception up here anyway.)

“She could tell that something had happened and she made mimosas,” Jemma said defensively, snapping his thoughts back to the here and now. “Have you ever had one of Skye's mimosas?” 

“Manly men don't drink mimosas,” he informed her. “They drink dark, disgusting things and make manly faces about it. What did you tell her, anyway?” 

“I don't remember much,” Jemma admitted, blushing, and studiously examined the wood of the table as she turned pinker. “It was just after finals had ended and so my head was a mess and...it was drunken ramblings mostly. Don't worry, I didn't tell her about the time your mother showed me your favorite stuffed monkey. Promise.” 

“But they weren't—they weren't drunken regretful ramblings, were they? Because we can stop any time that you want, Jemma, if you ever change your mind,” he blurted out. Now he was staring at the table too—the wood grain really was quite fascinating, wasn't it?--and holding his breath as he waited for her answer. “If you did, I...I wouldn't be happy but I would understand. I'm about six inches shorter and thirty pounds less than your usual type and you've seen me scream like a little girl over a spider--”

“Fitz, I've kissed you forty six times and I have no intention of stopping,” she said, smile creeping across her face and laughter in her eyes as she finally brought them up from the table, and slid her hand across the table to hook her fingers in the neck of his t-shirt and tug him across to press her mouth to his, soft and slow and warm. “Now it's forty-seven.”

“You've been counting too,” he grinned. She'd been thinking about it just as much as he had, looking at the evidence and tallying up the numbers, and he knew that Jemma only bothered to count the things that really mattered.

“Maybe.” Then she stole his cornbread.

 _v. Nashville, Tennessee, June 22, 6:45 pm_  
“I think we should go on a date.” Had that been her who said that? Oh god, that had been her who'd said that. 

“A date?” Fitz repeated as he stood frozen in the door to their motel room. Jemma wondered if he thought she'd been joking. She wasn't. Because even though she had no idea what had prompted her to say it, it sounded like a perfect idea now that she had. A controlled environment in which to continue their romantic experiment and control for confounding variables. Or just an excuse to see him dressed up for her, to walk around holding hands and being nauseatingly cute, to watch the sun set, to get all of the romantic first date potential and none of the first date awkward conversations.

“A social or romantic appointment or engagement. Romantic, in our case,” she supplied. In case of emergency, go for the dictionary. “We could go to the movies, or out for dinner, or just go wandering around the city?”

“You mean all the things that we do normally?” 

“Yes, but we're calling it a date.” Had she been accidentally dating Fitz for the past year without knowing it? Seen an endless series of movies with questionable science, witnessed the spectacular facial contortions he made after trying massaman curry for the first time, fallen down twelve times when he wanted to go ice skating, and missed all the really fun parts of dating? Jemma's brow furrowed. Perhaps she had. What a shame. “Plus it involves kissing.” 

“That sounds,um, ” A huge grin spread across Fitz's face. “That sounds great.”

They ended up at a restaurant called the Bluebird Cafe that they'd been told was famous by the desk clerk, who'd lit up when they'd asked her for recommendations and insisted on pulling a few strings to get them in tonight. “Trust me, you want to see these two. It's a great love story,” the clerk had said, beaming at them as she scribbled down directions on a Post-It. She was right.

Neither Fitz or Jemma knew much about country music, but the hushed silence in the cafe, and the way that the couple sitting on the stage looked at each other, told them that this was something unusual. Jemma nearly dropped her drink when she realized where she'd seen the woman before, remembering her blond hair and warm smile plastered across a thousand billboards and magazine covers, and leaned over to whisper in Fitz's ear. 

“Skye is going to be so jealous when we tell her,” Fitz said smugly. They'd found Skye's hidden stash of country music underneath her mattress sometime in January and teased her about it mercilessly for weeks after, until they'd found their friend Trip's well-worn Sunday in the Park with George CD and all three of them had ganged up on him instead. 

“It would be rude to take a picture, wouldn't it? It definitely would be.” Jemma sucked vigorously at her raspberry lemonade and sneaking another sideways glance at the couple on stage, as the man, all rumpled plaid shirt and laugh lines etched around his eyes, tuned his guitar and she hummed quietly, resting her hand on his shoulder and leaning over to kiss his cheek. 

“We can ask politely afterward. Use the accents.” Fitz reached over to grab some of her sweet potato fries, only to be swatted away. Undaunted, he grabbed her free hand instead and wove his fingers through hers. “We're on a date,” he explained. “It would be a shame if I didn't get to hold your hand.”

Jemma would have replied but then the couple on stage began to sing and the words stuck in her throat. Instead, she just squeezed his hand tight and brought her chair closer to his. And when he kissed her after the show, up against the car in a dark corner of the parking lot, licking and sucking at her neck as he worked his way up to her mouth and leaving marks that she had to cover for the next three days, she had to shut her eyes against what she saw in his. No one was ever going to love her in the same fierce, sweet, endless, impossible way that Leo Fitz did and it thrilled and terrified her in equal measure.

“Good date?” he whispered in her ear.

“Great date. Let's do it again sometime soon.”

 _vi. New Orleans, Lousiana, June 25, 2:17pm_  
Fitz could have walked faster than this streetcar. No, actually, the elderly lady leaning heavily on her cane could have walked faster than this streetcar. He was pretty sure that even the snail he'd just spotted in the street was moving faster than this streetcar.

“It's picturesque,” Jemma said brightly from where she was perched on the wooden bench beside him and checked her watch. 

“It's bloody inefficient,” he grumbled.

“Beignets, Fitz. Soft, warm pastries coated with powdered sugar and oozing chocolate. All the deep-fried things your heart desires. If you sit patiently for the rest of the ride and let me admire the architecture.” Jemma turned to gaze out the window at a row of massive pastel houses and sighed, half happily, half irritated. “Honestly, it's like dating a seven-year-old.” 

“So we're dating?” Fitz instantly stopped slumping against the seat, sat straight up to beam at her, and even shoved his notebook, where he'd been doodling ways to remotely take over the streetcar's engine and make it speed up, into one pocket. He got the sense that, even if they were officially dating, Jemma wouldn't approve.

“Of course we are.” She ghosted her lips against his. Once, twice, and then he finally gave in and twisted one hand through her hair to hold her in place and kiss her properly, nipping at her lower lip and tracing the lines of her face with the other hand. When he pulled away, they were both gasping for breath in the humid New Orleans air. 

“I think I found the guidebook. Do I get another kiss for that?” he asked hopefully.

“If you're good.” Jemma flipped open the book and tried to look stern.

“I'm always good.”

And, sun freckling his nose, eyes bluer than blue, leaning over her shoulder to rattle off facts, staring at her with the adoration that he thought he was good at hiding, even tolerating the Greek tourists that tried to take a photo of them, mouth whispering promises that sounded suspiciously like forever against her ear, oh god, was he good.

 _vii. The middle of nowhere, Kansas, June 28, who knows what time._  
“I trusted you to navigate, Fitz!” she shouted and stared out at the endless expanse of cornfields. To the north: cornfields. To the south: cornfields. To the east: yet more cornfields. To the west: cornfields. What a surprise. “You were the one who wanted to go to Mount blasted Rushmore, even though it was hundreds of miles out of our way, and it's literally a few faces carved into a mountain—not very well, I might add—and I said yes because apparently I've lost any sense of perspective and all it takes for me to agree to anything is for you to kiss me and that's really quite a disturbing fact.”

“Complaining about how we got to the middle of nowhere is not going to help us get out of the middle of nowhere,” he snapped. “And you certainly weren't helping me concentrate on the map. I'm pretty sure that what you were doing didn't count as safe driving practices.” 

“Do you want me to apologize for the fact that you're attracted to me? It's a biological reaction, Fitz. If you'd like me to draw a diagram, I'd be happy to oblige.” She glared at him through her sunglasses and took them off so he could tell she was glaring at him.

“I'm attracted to you pretty much all the time!” he burst out. “It's somehow turned into a constant state, like I've got some kind of sixth sense for you built in—I'm always aware of where you are, always wanting you to be closer,” he trailed off, blush staining his cheeks, and then remembered his point and tried to glare at her. He failed badly. “But you virtually attacking my neck doesn't help.”

“You are?” What he said shouldn't have made her less mad. But somehow it did, maybe because her head was always full of him too, her thoughts constantly going back to one constant point.

“I'm sorry, okay? I just—it's really silly, I know—but I wanted to go there for my mum. She loves _North by Northwest_ , that old Hitchcock movie, and part of it takes place there and I just thought I'd get her a souvenir or something. It's silly.”

“Why didn't you tell me that?” Jemma asked softly. She'd met Fitz's mum once or twice, seen the way that Fitz adored her and the way that she fussed over him, heard the stories about how his dad had walked out ten years ago, and if Claire Fitz had asked them to take a quick detour to the South Pole, she'd have started stocking it up on snowsuits. 

“Too stubborn for my own good,” he shrugged. “I'm sorry that I was such a prat. Really.”

“I'm sorry too.” She edged along the side of the car and reached up to kiss his cheek. “Can we be okay?” He didn't reply, just pulled her against him and kissed her properly, and she read his answer and his sheer, simple dedication in his steady hands at the curve of her waist and the press of his mouth against hers.

_Of course we'll be okay. We always are._

 _viii. Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, June 29, 8:00am_  
“It's a bunch of faces on a mountain.”

“It is certainly a bunch of faces on a mountain. Bright and early in the morning.” A pause. “I think it might have looked better in the movie.

“Do you want to go back to my room and watch the movie instead?”

“Yes.”  
_ix. Aspen, Colorado, June 30, 5:30pm._  
He should take her out on a second date. Fitz had been thinking about it through the miles and miles of highways that took them from South Dakota to Colorado, as Jemma drove at exactly the speed limit and tapped the steering wheel in time to the Beatles, as she ate bags of sour gummy candies one at a time, pointing out anatomical inaccuracies in the gummy sharks just to make him laugh, and as he watched the light stream in through the window and wrap itself around her the way he wanted to. It had been quite simple in the end: Jemma deserved something as spectacular as she was.

He'd started planning it somewhere in Wyoming, hunched over his phone and sending long texts to Skye while Jemma performed extended critical analyses of the gas station's snack selection and perched on the hood of the car to soak up the sun. “I have sunblock if you want some,” she'd offered and poked her head into the car window. He'd promptly dropped his phone trying to hide the pictures of the restaurant from her and had had to go scrambling under the passenger seat to find it again.

“My natural habitat is indoors,” he had replied, voice muffled by the seat as he squirmed further under it to find the phone. One foot had hit the glove compartment and it sprung open, sending maps, a stack of paper napkins, and his secret stash of pretzels everywhere.

“Because indoors is treating you so well right now. Let me know when you want to go?” Jemma'd leaned in to try to kiss him but had to settle for patting his back fondly. 

“I will.” Then his phone had buzzed with a confirmation email from the restaurant and a message from Skye: _You wouldn't believe the firewalls I had to hack through to get a reservation here. You owe me one, Fitz._

_I know I do_ , he'd sent back. _Maybe I'll even give you my mother's top secret biscuit recipe so Lance can make them for you._

And now there he was, fidgeting outside Jemma's room as he tried not to tug on his bow tie, which he was convinced was out to choke him, and checked his watch (a Christmas present from Jemma) repeatedly for something to do. He'd sent pictures of at least three different outfits to Skye, who'd assured him that he looked great in all three, and dawdled in his room until she'd sent another text telling him to hurry the frak up. (Lance had gotten her into Battlestar Galactica.) Fitz attempted to see his reflection in the mirror hanging by the elevator and wondered if maybe he should just dash back into--

The door to Jemma's room swung open and he was completely incapable of any kind of logical thought. But it wasn't the dress, something green and silky that clung to her like a second skin, or the way that her hair fell in waves around her face, or the heels that made her legs go on forever that did it. Fitz had always known that she was beautiful, from the moment that he met her. Somehow, it had slowly become a fundamental fact of his universe: the sun went around the earth, for every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction, and Jemma Simmons was beautiful. But this time, there was something about the small smile she gave him, spreading slowly across her face as she twirled around and his eyes went wide. Something about the realization that she knew he thought she was beautiful, that she wanted him to think that, that he was even allowed to think that, that she let him love her, even if he'd never said the exact words. Something about how incredibly lucky he was to get this moment with her. To get all the moments with her.

“You're perfect,” he said simply and walked forward to kiss her full on the mouth before she could deny it. 

They watched the stars together after dinner that night, staring up into the clear mountain skies until the sun rose, and he looked at her the entire time.

 _x. Las Vegas, Nevada, July 2nd, 1:45am_  
“If they'd just let me fix their air conditioning system, this wouldn't be a problem.” Fitz was sprawled out by the air conditioner, pressed as close to it as possible in the hope that the cold air would somehow seep into his bones. “I even told them that I knew what I was doing!”

“I think that they get a lot of people claiming that they know what they're doing,” Jemma said sleepily from the bed. “Just take off your clothes, come here, and go to sleep. It's not like I haven't seen you without a shirt before.” Fitz made a noise that sounded a lot like a squeak. 

“That was with the lights off,” he mumbled. “Or surrounded by water. Lots of water.”

“And?” She propped herself up on one elbow and peered over the edge of the bed. “Don't make me get up and bring you over here. I want my human pillow back.”

“I never agreed to be your human pillow.” He flopped on his back to stare up at her and gave up on ever being cool again. Metaphorically and literally. 

“You totally did.” She edged closer to the side of the bed and dangled a hand down temptingly. Fitz was the best human pillow she'd ever had—tall enough so she could curl herself around him, but short enough so he didn't overwhelm her, and, despite his ability to complain about everything else, never even said a word when she inevitably ended up cutting off blood flow to some part of his body. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I'd be better if the air conditioning was less measly,” he said and sat up against the bed to let her tug a hand through his curls comfortingly. “I'm just...your last boyfriend had muscles everywhere, Jemma, and I'm pretty sure I don't.”

“Everywhere except his brain. Besides, it wasn't fun to cuddle with all that muscle—something would always feel like it was poking at me,” Jemma shuddered, remembering. Fitz snickered and she promptly threw a pillow at him. “Not _that_ something!” 

He let her pull him up and pull his shirt off, and immediately made to slide under the sheet, but she stopped him before he could even get near the pillows and scrambled into his lap to inspect him. “Not bad,” she said with a wicked smile. “I see lots of potential. And besides,” Jemma slipped one hand through his and squeezed it tight. “Look how perfectly we fit together.”

She fell asleep tangled up in his arms and woke up to him kissing her, and when she looked at him, curls adorably rumpled and blue eyes bright, she felt her heart skip a beat in the way that meant trouble.

 _xi. Monterey Bay, California, July 5th, 11:47am_  
Jemma practically glowed in the blue light of the aquarium, as she traced the pattern of the fish with her hand across the glass and stood there, amazed. Fitz was just amazed at her, at the wonder that stole across her face whenever she saw something new and fascinating, at her sheer determination to find everything good. And, even though he didn't know how it had happened, she wanted to share everything that she found with him too.

“Fitz, come look,” she said excitedly and held out her hand to him. “I've counted at least ten different kinds of coral and you just have to see them.”

He hadn't meant to say it like that, without sunsets or candles or even any kind of privacy, but in the end, he didn't even think about it. Fitz breathed in and out and, somehow, the words came along with his breath, like he'd been saying it to her every day since he met her. (And later, thinking about it, he supposed he had.) “I love you,” he whispered.

The way that she kissed him afterward, wild and sweet and careful and reckless, told him that she knew.

 _xii. San Francisco, California, July 7th, 8:03pm_  
“I love you too.” They were standing at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, water lapping at their feet as the sun sank down over the horizon, and Jemma was testing out words that she'd never said before and she liked the way they sounded. 

And she could tell that he liked the way they sounded too, from how he held on to her and told her that he knew. “It's us from now on, isn't it?” he asked her.

“It always has been.” she told him.

**Author's Note:**

> The first person to go to my tumblr (bookishandbossy.tumblr.com) and correctly identify the couple performing on stage in the Nashville section wins a 500-word Fitzsimmons drabble on the subject of their choice! (Hint: it is a fictional couple, from TV.)


End file.
